Cristina Cippitelli will be our first Master Sommelier

Cristina Cippitelli will be our first Master Sommelier

Cristina Cippitelli: the love for the soil comes from her grandparents in Gaeta but she has learned to taste in  Boston and Toronto and now she has won a  Master Sommelier scholarship

By Donatella Cinelli Colombini, Montalcino, Brunello

And I am not referring to the Alma-AIS institute title that a few years ago created reaction of indignation but I am talking of the Court of Master Sommeliers a fellowship born in 1969 that includes 240 members in USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Germany, Holland and France. These are the top of the sommelerie: tasters, journalists, opinion  makers, wine educators… these are competent professionals, of great talent and who have an enormous influence on the market.

Their president is the great Gerard Basset who is also a Master of Wine. But the Master Sommeliers are now rivals, for prestige and influence of the very powerful MWs, in fact in some cases they are even more powerful.

There is not one Italian among either the Masters of Wine or the  Master Sommeliers.

A sign of provincialism that also surfaces in International competitions: when ther are Italians on the podium they work abroad , just like  Paolo Basso. Also the young women who might become the first Italian Master Sommelier lives in Canada. Her name is Cristina Cippitelli, and she came to visit me at Fattoria del Colle , from Toronto where she works at the Air Canada Center while she is studying for the  Wset diploma and for the Advanced Certificate for the Master Sommelier.

She is a lovely person and has a great story that I will tell you. Cristina has absorbed the love for the countryside as a child, in her grandparents home where they owned land with olive groves, vineyards and citrus orchards in Gaeta. The father’s family on the other hand comes from Sora

where he had a truck service and produced ice creams. Cristina grows up among these delicacies amidst the aroma of tomatoes and cold cuts made at home. For this reason after her degree in Political Sciences she takes a Master course in economics in  Bologna and she begins to study the cooperation in the food sector. This interest takes her to work 6 six years in the Lega delle Cooperative where she travelled all over Italy.

Her career though, in her eyes, is going too slow, and so Cristina decided to leave a stable job to go to Boston to better her English and to follow her news passion: wine. In the meantime she has found a partner, a chef with German-Caucasian-Chinese origins  who alternates over the hob a refined talent as a lutist who constructs classical guitars. For him Cristina moves to Toronto where she has another fundamental meeting, she connects with John Szabo the Master Sommelier to whom the enhancement of volcanic wines is due. Szabo appreciates Cristina’s tasting talent and pusher her to aim high by being her mentor, like Bruce Wallner and Jennifer Hunter well known MS. In the meantime Cippitelli looks forwards to a new career, step after step, and stating form the bottom. The most difficult experience  is in an exclusive restaurant where they propose tasting menus with 10 courses accompanied by 10 different wines, a formula apt for great wine lovers  that forces waiters and sommeliers to real a tour de force but it strengthens their professionalism in tasting and food matching.

Cristina grows professionally and becomes  general manager in restaurants.

Then something unexpected happens: her father has a sever vascular problem, he has urgent surgery and spends 3 months in intensive care. She leaves her job and stay in hospital with her father and this experience changes her life.  She goes back to Toronto determined to follow her dreams. She hunts for a job that will leave her time to study for Wset. The results give her strength, she goes to Boston for the  Certified  Master Sommelier exam and she comes out first so she gets the scholarship  called Michelle Wine Estate Clore , this is for the best students and allows them to travel and take other courses with special facilitations.

Cristina Cippitelli will succeed because she has talent , tenacity, communication skills and because she is in the right place o taste the most exclusive and important in the world. Only the very rich enter the Air Canada Center in Toronto , those who want the best both in the glass and in the service, a clientele who as learned to appreciate her because our Cristina never gets a tasting wrong and because she can tell wonderful stories about every wine.

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